beTech :: Evolve Already

beTech Labs was established by beTech members and made possible through generous commitments by The Office of The UVa Chief Information Officer. Herein describes the bylaws of the beTech Labs Project and how you can utilize these beTech resources for Web software development experiments.

Overview

BeTech Labs is the place where beTech members can communicate about and work on innovative, zany, and outside-of-the-box ideas without having to worry about acquiring and supporting hardware and software just to do the experimental work. Betech provides the hosting for you free of charge. Simiply follow the beTech Labs Guidelines and express the “beOpen attitude” and your innovation effort is off and running!

Guidelines

Infrastructure

BeTech Labs consists of the following elements:

• The beTech Labs Web development servers which run VMware to instantiate virtually any web server environment.
• A virtual host for your project. (example: lab2.betech.virginia.edu)
• A mailing list for each lab project.
• A registry of all lab projects.

Access

• New and existing labs are available to any beTech member. To become a beTech member, simply join the beTech mailing list (form located in the right column of every web page).
• To commit (write) code towards a specific Lab, you must join the individual lab’s mailing list and work with one of the lab Stewards.

New Labs

Requests for new labs are granted by the beTech Labs Resource Allocation Committee. RAC: (răk), through a voting process. The voting process utilizes a lazy consensus vote for approval (at least three +1 and no -1, 96 hours).

All new lab requesters naturally become the primary leadership for the requested lab. These leaders are named as “Stewards”. Note: lab leadership comes in pairs; so, a minimum of two people must request a new lab. The lab Stewards are responsible for maintaining up-to-date lab information, lab communication, including fulfilling required reporting to the beTech officers. Failure to do so can result in lab completion.

Use of BeTech Labs Web Systems

1. The existence of each lab is temporary, for a maximum period of one year from inception. This is designed to encourage the production of experiments. After one year the experiment will be completed and if the experiment was successful beTech encourages the lab to move their experiment to an official open source organization like Apache or Sourceforge.
2. Labs will not be used as a production environment or advertised to individuals not involved in the development process—i.e., whose only use of the applications would be to enjoy or benefit from the services they provide.
3. Sensitive data will not be stored in the assigned development space, or accessible using any application developed. “Sensitive data” is defined according to guidelines set out by the Office of Information Technology (OIT). They include, but are not limited to: social security numbers; personal medical information; student grades and evaluations; valid credit card numbers and other personal financial information; authentication credentials for computing systems outside the development server.
4. Assigned development resources will be used in accordance with all requirements specified in the UVa Responsible Computing Handbook

Stewards

A lab Steward may resign at any time and select another consenting Steward by communicating with the beTech Labs Resource Allocation Committee (RAC). If any lab cannot maintain two beTech members as Stewards at any time, the lab status will be changed from active to idle until two leaders can be established again for the lab.

Bylaws Change

Changes to the beTech Labs bylaws requires a majority vote from the beTech Labs Committee.

Labs Lifecycle

A beTech lab can have three states:

Active

The lab is actively being discussed and developed by it’s members and everyone is having a blast.

Idle

Activity is paused, but it is expected to continue in the future. A lab Steward may request to change a lab’s status from Active to Idle and back again at any time by contacting the beTech RAC.

Completed

Activity is completed and unlikely to resume in the future, is transfered to an open source organization, or the temporary one year term is completed for the lab. The lab configuration is archived.

Disclaimer

The beTech Development Resources, bDR, are provided as a service for UVa employeed or affiliated beTech member web developers and system testers to experiment with emerging technologies; design and test systems in a sandbox environment where they will not destabilize production systems; and create proof-of-concept models that can be developed further on production platforms. The bDR is not a production web environment.

beTech will make reasonable efforts to provide reliable services on best-effort basis, but ultimately the preservation of artifacts for each lab is the sole responsibility of the individual lab members, including copies and backups of code, data, and system configuration information.

The beTech Labs entity is continually adapting to meet organizational goals and growth challenges. Lab users should expect changes to beTech Lab operations to occur at any time. Any changes will be posted at this web site. It is the responsibility of beTech members to keep up with the changes as they occur.